


Watching Paint Dry

by Elphen



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Apologetic Aziraphale, Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale's books, Can't think of more tags, Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), I Can't Believe I Wrote This, M/M, Overreaction, Paint Fumes, Passing Out, Post-Canon, Retirement, South Downs Cottage (Good Omens), Understanding Crowley, Watching Paint Dry, Wriggly Crowley, damaged book, irrational Aziraphale, remorseful aziraphale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-10
Updated: 2020-04-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:14:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23582929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elphen/pseuds/Elphen
Summary: Post-canon. While snuggling on the sofa in the South Downs cottage, Crowley manages to damage one of Aziraphale's more treasured books, which leaves him very upset. punishment and lesson, Crowley is sent to learn to be still for a longer period of time, by being put in a corner until the floor varnish and wall paint has dried around him. He isn't allowed to use miracles.How will Crowley cope? Will he cheat? How will Aziraphale apologise for his reaction?
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 17
Kudos: 68





	Watching Paint Dry

**Author's Note:**

> Anyone have a better title? And apologies for the summary.
> 
> This is all MusicRose's fault. She wrote in a comment, "You could probably write Crowley watching paint dry and make it somehow funny and interesting!" and my brain thought that was an excellent idea to tackle...I don't know why.
> 
> I can't say whether it's funny or interesting, but I can say that I've written it.
> 
> (I might've been playing it a bit safe on the rating)

He was stuck. Entirely and utterly stuck and he would continue to be so until things…dried out.

Perhaps it would be a wise move to back up a little and explain what was going on. How he’d got into this situation in the first place. It was certainly unbelievable and ridiculous enough to warrant an explanation, or so he felt.

It had all started with a cuddle. Nothing wrong with that. In fact, he’d admit he was rather partial to a cuddle, provided the right circumstances and ingredients were there. Namely, one soft, warm Principality who had elected to be on the side of humanity rather than either Heaven or Hell, just as he himself had done, and who he now shared a surprisingly spacious cottage in the South Downs with.

That was, it was spacious even when it was full up to the rafters, and a bit beyond, with all the books Aziraphale couldn’t bear to be away from for any length of time.

The rest of the books were still in the Soho bookshop. Attempting to get the angel to give up the shop entirely had proven a…hazardous endeavour on the demon’s part and he had wisely given up after not too long at it.

He rather valued having a corporation, especially when getting a new one was no longer just difficult, having to answer for what you’d done with the old one, but outright impossible, given…

Back to the point, their cottage had plenty of space left over, and so Crowley had made the executive decision to have a much larger sofa there than the one that had been left in the bookshop. One that they could both lie stretched out on without any trouble. Could even lie side-by-side if they wanted to.

He’d made the decision and Aziraphale had okayed it.

It wasn’t as though Crowley was _stupid,_ was it?

Well…that was a bit up for debate, really, at least in hindsight.

See, given that they now owned a spacious and, just as importantly, incredibly comfortable sofa, it wasn’t surprising that one retired demon would take to using that at, perhaps not every given opportunity but certainly far more than the other cottage resident.

He’d spread out on it, too, in a boneless fashion that really seemed quite impossible for a body to achieve without breaking irreparably – until you remembered his snake attributes.

But that meant that often enough when Aziraphale did decide to use it himself, usually to settle down with one of the longer books or one that required deeper analysis as he read, he had trouble actually finding a seat.

Of course, he could just shove at the more or less boneless thing that was his partner and gain access to seat cushion real estate that way. But that was hardly the proper way to do it and therefore not how Aziraphale did it, despite everything else.

So, instead, the logical thing to do was of course to lift up the parts of the prone body that were in the way, settle down in the newly freed-up space and then replace the parts into their original spots, now just with a bit of angel between them and the sofa.

Which in turn meant that Crowley was sprawled at least halfway across the angel. No body parts were allowed to hang or dangle off the sofa, though, the blond being very careful about that, for some reason.

Crowley didn’t mind, it had to be said. Quite the opposite, in fact. Apart from giving him an opportunity to soak in the presence of his angel to an extent that he didn’t too often get, it gave him a place to snooze and now he had a warm, comfortable body beneath him, to soak heat from and nuzzle into. To burrow into somewhat, even, if that took his fancy. Which it often did, if he was being honest.

And that, right there, was part of the problem, if not the outright nub and crux of it.

One day Aziraphale had suddenly closed his book, with a rather demonstrative gesture and a sigh that could only properly be described as long-suffering.

Even then, Crowley didn’t properly take notice of anything until the book was put down and he could feel the body beneath him shifting enough that he to react. If he didn’t, he would actually slide off the malleable surface underneath and right onto the floor. Something which he wasn’t keen on at all.

Reluctantly, he lifted his head and looked the other supernatural being in the eye.

“What?” he asked and if his voice was just a slight bit groggy and unfocused, could he be blamed? He’d been quite blissful where he’d been, just mentally floating.

Being.

Things weren’t improved by the somewhat, to use a word that Aziraphale might employ, vexed expression he was faced with when he looked up at the other.

“Honestly, dear, must you?” he asked and his tone matched his voice.

"Must I? Must I what?” Crowley asked, completely not following. “What are you on about? I haven’t done anything.”

He shifted for a more comfortable position at that, the previous movement having dislodged him more than a little, and if anything, Aziraphale’s vexed expression deepened.

"That thing you just did, must you do that?”

"You’re going to have to be a bit more specific.”

"That moving around bit,” Aziraphale finally managed to clarify, now looking a little frustrated as well. “You are positively squirming about.”

“I don’t squirm!” Crowley protested, indignant at the very suggestion. To be perfectly honest, he couldn’t say for certain whether he did or not, but that didn’t mean he was going to just admit to it. Especially not when Aziraphale was put out about it like that.

“You do, dear boy, and quite frankly, it’s both severely distracting and not a small bit painful, as well.”

Crowley opened his mouth at that, ready to say something else to defend himself. The mention of ‘not a small bit painful’, though, made him shut it right back up again, even if it did take his still slightly sleep-addled brain a moment to parse it.

“I can lie still,” he muttered after a long moment, somewhat guilty and a little embarrassed.

He settled back down, with his head on the spot just where stomach transitioned to chest. It was one of his favourites, though saying that was like trying to pick a favourite out of a basket full of puppies. Or for the angel, pick his favourite dessert.

A hand found its way into the strands of his hair after a moment, stroking gently as the creak of a spine indicated the book being reopened. So, he assumed he was forgiven.

* * *

So, that left him stuck here. In the corner of a room that they had not only somehow not yet managed to fill up with anything – Crowley had the sneaking suspicion that Aziraphale had in fact expanded the tiniest of box rooms into a proper room just for this purpose – but hadn’t painted, either.

Until now, when there was not just paint on the walls but varnish on the floor, as well. Varnish and paint that both took an awful long time to dry, that was.

The only spot that shouldn’t have varnish, for whatever reason, was a tiny little trapdoor that Aziraphale claimed had been a priest hole once upon a time.

As it needed to be something that was easy to hide, it was located in the corner and now it hosted not a priest but one snake demon who was now the one frustrated and ‘vexed’.

“Aziraphale, seriously!” he called, raising his voice to be heard all the way downstairs. “Come on now! This is ridiculous!”

Silence was all that greeted him. He knew better than to think that the other hadn’t heard him, though. The angel had the most excellent senses when it suited him. When it didn’t, you might as well try to get the attention of a corpse. Or a stone pillar. To be honest, either of those options were probably easier.

Perhaps that wasn’t the way he should’ve phrased, though. Possibly penance would go down better with the ethereal. But Crowley honestly hadn’t meant to do anything that would hurt the other.

It had been an honest accident; squirming in his sleep hard enough that he not only burrowed deeper into the softness that was his angel but dug his elbow into somewhere sensitive. Which made the angel yelp and jump, which in turn jostled the demon enough that he instinctively kicked out with a leg.

What was more unfortunate was that he also, through instinct, unfortunately bit down into the soft flesh nearest to him.

That just so happened to be the point just beneath his collar bone – Aziraphale had taken to forgoing the bowtie and waistcoat when at home nowadays and even opening a button or two of his shirt – and the pain of that had been enough to make the blond let out a small shriek of surprise and pain.

Worse than that, though, it made him drop the book he’d been reading, a rare and rather delicate tome, and it tumbled onto the floor, where it landed spine first.

The book couldn’t handle being treated that way, it seemed, and so, when Aziraphale gingerly picked it up after a minute, his eyes widened in horror at the sight of it.

Which had ended up, after some shouting and gesticulating on both their parts as they argued back and forth without really getting anywhere, with Crowley now stuck in this corner, forced to sit and wait in this one spot until such a time as the paint and the varnish both dried and he could move.

Of course, he could just miracle himself out of it, or miracle himself some clean clothes if they should get ruined by either material in his escape. However, not only was there a risk of getting stuck on the varnish, which would be painful to get out of, there was the very real risk that Aziraphale would find, somehow, and would not be best pleased.

Aziraphale had made sure people who came to his shop to purchase it never came back, and they had only _threatened_ to destroy his books.

But Crowley honestly hadn’t meant to! It was a complete accident, just a concatenation of circumstances that had resulted in the serious mishap, one that if anyone was to blame for, it was at least as much the angel’s as it was the fault of the demon.

He’d offered to repair the bloody book, too, but had been rebuffed entirely, which he hadn’t thought was fair. It wasn’t as though he was a novice at miracles, was it? Not like they went wrong when he did them. He could fix a simple book without any issue.

The point was, it was something that could be sorted, and fairly easily, too, he thought. It was nothing to get this worked up over – and it certainly wasn’t anything to punish Crowley for like this.

Which really was disproportionate as a punishment, on top of everything else. He couldn’t say that it was inappropriate as one, seeing as Aziraphale had very carefully explained just why this was his punishment.

Since he couldn’t be still, the blond had explained, for any length of time, it seemed, it was only fitting that he should be subjected to a little lesson in doing just that.

Therefore, he would have to sit there on the trapdoor, completely still, until both the paint and the varnish dried and could be touched without it coming off or the demon sticking to it. Either would be bad, really, but Crowley had a suspicion that right now, the ruined floor or wall would be seen as the more undesirable outcome of the two.

Because it was the both of them that was coated, he was forced to sit with his back straight, just a few inches away from the wall, and his legs pulled up into half a sinus curve. Not a comfortable position, at least not when you were forced to hold it for any length of time. To hold it for as long as it would take before either or both things dried, that threatened to become excruciating, even to a being whose limbs had turned hypermobility into a lifestyle choice.

It smelled, too, which didn’t help matters in the slightest. Thankfully, Aziraphale hadn’t been cruel enough to go with something too chemical but even so, the fumes and the consequent smells wafting from around and beneath him as he sat there were not pleasant, to say the least. Especially not in combination.

Perhaps things would’ve been better if he’d had something to do. He didn’t read, though, and he’d forgotten his phone down in the living room when they’d argued, and he’d then been more or less dragged up here.

Would Aziraphale notice it if he materialised the phone in his hand? Probably and he could pull it back just as easily. Or make sure that it didn’t work at all. Which might be fine, apart from the fact that too much fiddling with electronics like that might break it irreparably.

He wasn’t going to risk that. There were pictures on that phone that were very precious to him and which he had yet to get over onto another device.

Cloud-services he just didn’t trust. It was far too close to being a Hellish invention without actually being one – and he should know – that it was impossible for him to trust.

So, for the moment, he was stuck, with nothing to do but try not to move or even squirm as he literally watched paint dry. And varnish. Not to forget the varnish.

If only he could forget the ruddy varnish.

He couldn’t even tell whether that was drying or not. At least with the paint, he had something to go on. It required him to focus, to narrow his vision and concentrate on it, to a degree he rarely employed.

If he did that, though, he could tell when the particles of paint had a little more moisture drained from them, growing minutely deeper in colour and losing its shine somewhat.

Just because he was a snake didn’t mean his eyesight had to be as poor as those buggers. He’d been an angel before he was a snake, after all.

At one point, though he didn’t know just how long into the wait that was, he fancied he could hear the crackle as the outer layers of paint reached a new level of dry. But he might just be imagining that.

The smell had lessened, he could say that for certain, from both areas, though mainly from the paint. Or perhaps he had just got used to it? A brain can filter out the most amazing things, so it doesn’t have to actively process it constantly.

Looking down at the varnish, he couldn’t see any discernible difference from when it had first been applied, by a miracle that would’ve definitely counted as ‘frivolous’ had they both still been under the heel of their respective head offices.

Then again, what did you look for in varnish when it came to determining whether it was hardening or not? Losing its shine? Gaining more of it? He had no idea.

At least he had something to go on with the paint – more than one artist had counted him as a close associate over the years and as such, Crowley had attained an unasked for knowledge of different types of paint and their ability to dry, on canvas, walls and, most important from the demon’s point of view, skin.

A stray thought about taking counter-revenge on Aziraphale through painting him or at least part of him and then letting it dry instantly, so that the skin contracted and got itchy at the same time, flitted through Crowley’s mind.

He dismissed it almost the moment it did, however. Not entirely because he shouldn’t retaliate – he was a demon, for crying out loud, he wasn’t supposed to be magnanimous or even all that fair – but because he would live to regret it should he choose to try. Of course, being immortal and all, he would live regardless, but the point stood.

‘Just enough of a bastard to be worth liking’, wasn’t that what he’d said to him that day where the world had very nearly become a very big, very ordered nothing? Well, you couldn’t say he didn’t live up to the brief.

And yet…yet he was still very much an angel, bastard or not. Or maybe it was more accurate to say that he was closer to what people thought of as angels, as he was genuinely kind when he was kind, rather than the stilted, almost manufactured and play-pretend version that you otherwise got from angels. Same went for being good, didn’t it?

For somebody’s sake, how long could it take for something as ridiculously simple as a coat of varnish to dry?

He glared at it but, without access to miracles, he was fairly limited in what he could achieve. Limited, but not entirely inhibited.

It shrank away from his glare but other than that, it didn’t have much of an effect.

“Go on, then,” he hissed. “I dare you.”

No change whatsoever. Because of course there wasn’t.

Threatening it was of course an option but didn’t seem as though it would yield that much of a result and so there wasn’t much point in doing that.

Bless it for being a ruddy insentient…thing. It had no business being, being that, when he needed something to vent at. All it could do was lie there and take it. How was that going to help?

No. Just as there wasn’t much point in threatening it, there was very little, if any point in getting worked up about it, either.

Of course, it might be something to point out that he wasn’t exactly expending energy he was going to need elsewhere soon. But that wasn’t the point, was it?

What was the point?

He didn’t know. All he knew was that he had been stuck in this place, in this position beyond the point where it by any stretch of the imagination could be called comfortable or even bearable, and there was not an end in sight.

Could he blow on the varnish? Or the paint? Nah. Wouldn’t yield any real result, he felt fairly, or rather unfairly and somewhat sourly, sure at this point.

Or maybe that was merely because he was feeling boxed in, like some sort of sideshow – and he’d been a sideshow, twice. Well, thrice, really, if you included the time he’d got himself stuck in his snake form – his fear of forgetting how to change back hadn’t come out of nowhere, even though he’d eventually remembered at the time – and someone thought it a most excellent idea to catch him while he was sleeping and throw him into a cage to be gawked at.

He could’ve got out immediately, of course, he was still a demon. Some poxy bars shouldn’t contain him, no matter what they were made of, but as the side show he’d been travelling with was going where he had to go for a job, fortuitously, he’d opted to stay put and get himself sorted.

If only they’d stop rapping at the bars, it was annoying, and when he didn’t react out of spite, they rapped harder.

The main consolation on being stuck as a snake was that when someone had opened his cage one night and let themselves in for idiotic mischief, he’d been able to bite one of them on the arse before slithering away. It’d been a squeeze to get out, what with his bulk, but he’d managed it, listening to the shrieks as he went.

Now that was an option he could – no. No, varnish would probably hurt more on scales than on feet. More body mass, for one.

All he could do was wait, it seemed.

He bared his teeth and growled. Then, when that didn’t help alleviate his feelings in the slightest,

Aziraphale might’ve thought to open a window, he thought. It was getting a little muggy in here, and it wasn’t only because the sun had come out in the last half an hour, judging by the rays, before it sunk beneath the horizon entirely, and had picked that half hour to stream in through the window he was closest to.

Stream right onto where he sat, making him squeeze his eyes almost shut if he didn’t want to be blinded for a while.

As he squinted against the ray warming his face – and he didn’t miss the slight irony of how he’d normally bask and, more importantly, stretch in a beam like that, getting to enjoy as much of it as he possibly could – he thought his head felt more than a bit heavier than it ought to, even with the warmth of the room and all.

Not only that, it felt…fuzzy? As though someone had crammed a whole load of cotton wool in through his ears. What was more, they continued to stuff it in, making his head heavier still and his thoughts sluggish and light at the same time as they were softened and bounced on the cotton and also hindered by the sheer thickness of it.

When had that started? Now that he thought, or tried to think, back on it, he didn’t think it had happened all at once and certainly not only a few minutes ago. Beyond that, though, pinning down when was a lot more difficult. It wasn’t helped by the cotton itself, of course.

Well, screw this for a game of soldiers. Punishment was all very well and all, and he’d play along with the angel’s strange ideas like he always did, but there was a limit to how far he was willing to go. Feeling woozy and, and fuzzy, without the presence of any sort of alcohol, that wasn’t right.

As he pulled his legs more firmly under him, though, he paused.

On the other hand, though…to get up now, that would be giving up, wouldn’t it? Admitting defeat, for one thing, quite apart from letting Aziraphale down.

Because, and this took a bit to filter through and become something approaching coherent thoughts, even though it had been an accident and he thought Aziraphale was blowing it out of proportion, just a tiny bit, he couldn’t really blame the blond. Not truly, beyond what he on pure principle.

He knew how much the books meant to Aziraphale and, if he flipped it around, the thought of the angel ripping a hole in the upholstery of the Bentley was one that sent a very unpleasant sensation rushing through him.

Yes, he’d fixed that sort of thing before – the Anathema girl and her blessed bike sprang to mind – but that didn’t mean he was okay with it. Far from it.

In fact, he still didn’t want to as much as think about the time when he watched the last remnants of his beloved car fall apart. At the time, he’d tried to come off more calm and collected, if not exactly cool – with the way he’d been feeling at the time and all that he’d gone through before then, cool had been just a shelf too high to reach – than he felt, but something inside of him had died along with his car.

To have it restored by Adam to a state, not as good as new but as good as it’d been, patina and all, had helped, yes, but it hadn’t completely taken care of the feeling. The something that had died had only been somewhat resuscitated, anyway.

So, with that in mind, he’d probably got off lightly with this kind of reaction, this kind of punishment.

Perhaps it was more accurate to compare his car to the entire bookshop. But then, that had burned, too, and so it was feasible that Aziraphale had an echo of that, even if he hadn’t seen the shop burn, each time something even looked like it would happen to his beloved books.

All of this took some time to consider, mainly because the cotton wool was slowly but surely growing thicker – and since when had a percussion section of an orchestra taken up residence in his brain?

He thought that perhaps he should at least stand up. It was probably because he’d been sitting down too long, stuck in one place. A bit of a stretch of various limbs that wouldn’t bring him in danger of touching anything and he should be good.

Something about that struck him as wrong but he couldn’t put his finger on why exactly that was.

Then again, he had increasing trouble putting his finger on anything right now, at least in a metaphorical and mental sense.

How long had passed? He thought it had been daylight when he’d been put up here but had that been today? Trying to recall, all he came up with was vague images that wasn’t much help.

He looked around and then down. No change, as far as he could see. Could they go backwards? Become wetter as they went? Aziraphale wouldn’t do that, would he? Nah, that wouldn’t be – that would be counter-predicating…no, that was wrong. What was the word? Counter…counter…counter-something?

Frowning in concentration and feeling the pressure in his head increase as he did so, he turned his attention to the nearest wall and prodded it.

It came away with only the merest hint of paint.

Okay, then. That was progress, at least.

Was it? Progress concerned what, exactly? He had trouble fixing the answer to that in his mind, suddenly…trouble fixing much of a sentence, even when he tried really hard.

There was…something wrong in that. Something very wrong. He felt drunk and yet…not? S-s-sssimilar but not quite it. Adja…adje…adjective.

No. Wrong again. Why were words so hard?

He giggled, then frowned at himself. Since when had he started to giggle? Didn’t giggle, not ever. Snort, yeah, chortle. Perhaps even chuckle, at a push. Never _giggle._

That was for, for – bastard winged book. No, not book. Bookshop. Bookshop owner. Bastard winged bookshop owner, that was it. Or not. Not quite.

What was it, then?

“Angel!” he shouted as he got it. It should’ve therefore come out triumphantly or at least with a sense of joy and accomplishment. What it actually came out as, however, was more of a shouted plea.

He stared at the finger, faintly coated in red. Blood? No, wait, that wasn’t…smelled like paint. Shouldn’t still smell. If it smelled, it was…something. Non-dry. What was the word? Wet. That was it.

“Angel!” he shouted again, slightly weaker than before, but at the same time, more pleading.

He thought he heard a chair scraping as it backed up over wooden flooring, somewhat faintly as it was down below but with speed, but he wasn’t entirely sure.

Could be something he imagined, after all. Or it might be the sound of his blood pumping in his ears, which he’d heard for the last…little bit. A minute? Could be a minute.

He felt his upper body, and consequently his head, slump forward and touch the wall, his forehead in particular. That was a bad thing, wasn’t it? Why was it a bad thing? Because…because something wet?

Just as he began to slump further, he definitely heard the door to the room bang open. He thought there was a snap of something, too, but he wasn’t quite as certain about that one.

The hands on his shoulders were there, though, as they pulled him upright and he was fairly sure about the light disc that was a, a face, just above him.

“Crowley? Crowley, can you hear me?”

“Course I can, you’re right there, ‘m not deaf,” he said, indignant. Or it would’ve been, had it actually made it past his lips as anything other than a string of unintelligible noises.

He felt something run through his hair. Felt familiar. Felt nice. He leaned his head into it.

In fact, he leaned rather more than his head into it and Aziraphale had to quickly shift his grip to keep the demon from keeling right over or toppling them both over, neither of which was helpful in the situation.

Not that Crowley had much presence of mind to think about either at the time. Not much presence of mind for anything at all, really, not at the moment.

Aziraphale looked down at the figure he held and swallowed. His eyes fluttered closed and the breath he took was shaky.

“Oh, Aziraphale, you blind, utter boneheaded _fool_ ,” he said, and he made no effort to soften his voice or choose his words more carefully or kindly, beyond his usual moderation of swearwords and suchlike. He opened his eyes again, with force. “Should’ve seen this coming, shouldn’t have put him in a situation like this. Shouldn’t have got so upset over your stupid _book._ Now look what you’ve done!”

Gently and carefully he shifted his grip again, moving so that he had one arm underneath an armpit and across the slim back, the grip firm. Meanwhile, the other arm did a complicated, almost impossible wiggle as it went under the middle of slim thighs and then round so the hand supported a bony hip and partially the small of the back.

In other words, as much support as he could give so he wasn’t in danger of dropping or otherwise harming the body that was growing limper and more pliant as time went on.

Adding to the angel’s worry.

He thought about opening the window in here but that could wait. Crowley wasn’t going to stay in the room for a moment longer than he had to, that was for certain.

That in mind, the blond rose up onto his feet with a small noise but otherwise no issue, the lanky body easily lifted.

The head lolled a little as he moved and there was a murmur of…something or other, it didn’t quite manage to get to words. He didn’t otherwise stir and, even though his dark glasses were still on, he was quite clearly asleep.

Or at least, he was unconscious, which wasn’t the same thing.

Aziraphale paused at that, his expression of regret and guilt deepening a little, then pressed his lips briefly against a high temple.

I’m so sorry, my dear,” he murmured against the skin. “But I will tell you that when you are conscious to hear it. I’ll sort it out, I promise, don’t you worry.”

With that, shifting just a tiny bit to make absolutely sure he had a firm grip on the lithe body, he walked out of the room, the door shutting neatly behind them.

* * *

When Crowley came to, it was looking up into a whiteness that he didn’t immediately recognise and for a moment, he panicked, not knowing where he was or what was going on.

When he knew neither of those things, and couldn’t recall anything of what had gone before, either, it was a pretty fair bet that something was amiss, possibly seriously amiss, and he was about to pay for it.

Then a familiar voice broke into his thoughts.

“It’s alright, Crowley,” it said. “Nothing is the matter, it’s alright. Relax.”

He turned his head in the direction of the voice, only noting as he opened his eyes that it lacked the usual tint of dark glass. Then again, as he’d been horizontal, that was, in bed, it was probably for the best that he wasn’t wearing them. Just because he could materialise new ones didn’t mean he was going to be reckless with the ones he had.

“Aziraphale?” he murmured, trying to get his bearings, blinking repeatedly.

He had the strange sensation that though he was a little bit groggy and did indeed need a moment more to work out what was going on, he ought to be feeling a whole lot worse than he did.

The angel, who was sitting next to him, back against the headboard of the bed, gave a small nod of confirmation. He didn’t smile at that and the look on his face was oddly serious.

Nor did he, a part of Crowley noted, have any book with him. Which was odd, to say the least.

“What happened?” was what he meant to say but it came out somewhat more garbled.

Nevertheless, it seemed that the blond understood.

“You had something of a negative reaction, it seems,” he answered, his voice just as quietly serious as his expression.

“What to?”

“To the fumes coming off the combination of paint and varnish that you’d been…marinating in all the time you’ve been stuck up on that trapdoor.”

Guilt crept into the expression at that, though Crowley didn’t register it immediately.

Fumes? Trapdoor? What trapdoor – oh. Of course. The priest hole trapdoor. The one he’d been sitting on for the last…how long, exactly? He didn’t honestly know. But yeah, he remembered. He’d been sitting up there because…because…

Why?

He had to concentrate, brow knitting as he did so.

Because he’d broken the spine of one of Aziraphale’s books – accidentally, he might add – and had been brought up there to learn a lesion on being able to sit, or lie, still without any kind of squirming.

Had he succeeded in that, then, or had he failed? The memories around that last bit of the stay up there was rather fuzzy and disjointed and trying to join them together only resulted in a Dadaism-cubism mashup nightmare.

Fumes?” he asked. “Wait, hang on – “

He scrambled and managed, after a bit of trial and error, to sit himself up. Aziraphale assisted him but didn’t try to push or pull him one way or the other.

“So that did – you didn’t intend that, did you?”

“ ** _No_**!”

The word was out before Crowley had even finished his sentence and the look of guilt on Aziraphale’s face intensified to the point that for the demon to miss it, he would’ve had to wear a blindfold, and even then, the jury was out.

A plump hand had reached out and grabbed onto his wrist at the same instant the ‘no’ burst out, but it was almost as quickly retracted, as though he’d broken some unspoken rule by doing it.

He hadn’t, of course; they’d got over that whole ‘we shouldn’t touch’ deal in the time they’d spent together in the cottage. Mostly, at least, and they were working on it. What’s been established for a long time, good or bad, isn’t easily changed or remedied.

“No, I most certainly didn’t intend – I didn’t think that far. I should have, I know I should have. It is quite the obvious thing, in hindsight, and I can’t for the life of me think why – “

“I can.”

It was meant as a mutter. Well, no, it was meant as a thought that would stay a thought. It wasn’t meant to be voiced and it most definitely wasn’t meant to be heard.

But it was and Aziraphale most certainly heard it.

His face fell.

“Oh. Yes. Of course. Quite so. I can see that, yes. I should’ve…silly of me, really. From start to finish of this whole debacle.”

Aziraphale, looking guilty, apologetic and very much as though he felt incredibly stupid, pulled away at that, settling himself further out on the bed. About as far to the edge as he could while remaining on the bed. Even then, it seemed like he had to fight with himself to keep from moving off the bed entirely. His hands, folded in his lap, kept twisting together in obvious agitation.

“Hey, now, that wasn’t what I meant.” Crowley spoke calmly, edging in on softly, without rancour, because he didn’t feel any.

It might be that Aziraphale hadn’t thought about it, mainly because, well…but Crowley hadn’t thought about it, either, not even when he’d been stuck in the middle of it and should’ve cottoned on, aha, to what had been happening to him.

He reached out a hand, having to move a little across the bed to manage it, seeing as the idiot had moved himself away like that, and laid on top of one of the twisting ones. It stilled the motion, as intended, but didn’t otherwise seem to have much, if any, effect on the other.

Aziraphale made a small grimace that might’ve had a smile in its ancestry somewhere as he glanced up, very briefly, at the demon before he looked away again.

“Perhaps not, and I thank you for that, dear. But if it wasn’t, it was what you should’ve meant. I ought to know better than to let something like a, a book put you in danger like that.”

“Angel, I wasn’t in danger, it was only – “

“We can’t get a new corporation if something happens to these,” Aziraphale interrupted, softly. “Not now. Not anymore.”

Crowley stopped in whatever he’d been attempting to say, the reality of what Aziraphale had just said sinking in with a clarity that was more chilling than expected.

He shook it off, though. It was a reality that they’d have to deal with and besides, there were options to get around it. “We can repair the ones we have, and you did, as far as I can tell. Don’t worry about it.”

“Would you stop being so aggressively _reasonable_ about it?” the blond said, and though it was a snap, it was the petrol of guilt that fuelled it. “I put you in danger and made you stay in it, too, as though the first one wasn’t enough, for something as unimportant and, quite frankly, ludicrous as the spine of a book breaking.”

“They’re important to you,” Crowley pointed out as he moved himself a little closer still to the angel, in the hope that it’d be slight enough not to prompt the other to move off the bed entirely. It had worked the first time, which was a hopeful thing. “Incredibly important. I know that. It’s fine.”

“They shouldn’t be treated as more important than you because they aren’t!” Aziraphale burst out, pained as his head snapped up to look the other in the eye.

A stray thought in Crowley’s mind piped up to wonder whether that wasn’t painful, when you didn’t have a more…flexible spine.

Most of his mind, however, was rather frozen. He might’ve wondered whether there were any remnants of the fumes knocking about in his head. That was, he would have, if he didn’t know with absolute certainty that Aziraphale would have made _sure_ there wasn’t even a trace of it left, in his head or otherwise on him.

No, what froze him was something altogether more metaphorical – the words the angel had just said.

Well, perhaps not so much the words themselves as what they meant.

Aziraphale, the angel who cherished his books above everything in the world, well, apart from…who had his bookshop not because he wanted to sell any but simple because at some point, you run out of space on your shelf and you need somewhere to put them all…

 _That_ Aziraphale, Angel of the Eastern Gate, had just said that Crowley wasn’t only important to him – whatever doubts he’d had about that over the millennia had rather…melted away in the whole averting the apocalypse together thing – he was more important to him than his books were.

The snake demon blinked rapidly in succession at that, purely out of sheer shock.

It seemed as though Aziraphale was embarrassed by his admission, however; his hands had begun twisting together again, harder and faster than before and he was very resolutely looking down at them as they moved.

Not even Crowley sliding almost right up next to him, moving fast as he did so, could make him look back up or even stop the twisting.

When he was wrapped in long arms and pulled against a thin chest, however, he did look up, in confusion more than anything else.

“Crowley?”

“Fucking heaven, angel, spare a thought for my poor heart, would you?” the demon murmured, but he was smiling as he said it.

“I’m sorry – “

“Don’t be sorry. Don’t ever be sorry about that.” He squeezed the soft body just slightly. “That would be worth heaving a heart attack for.”

Colour tinted the tips of not insignificant ears quite deeply at that comment.

It only deepened when Crowley continued with, “And it’s definitely worth being stuck on a priest hole trapdoor for ruddy hours until you pass out, apparently from fumes you didn’t know were present around – which you by the way have no side effects from because someone reacted quickly.”

“Crowley…”

“What?” the demon asked, pulling back a little so the blond could see his unaffected and entirely innocent smile. “It’s true.”

“Well, _yes_ , but…”

He trailed off and Crowley could see the colour slowly spreading down the neck and across the cheeks, even from his current prolific vantage point.

If that was the reaction he got when giving Aziraphale compliments like that, he had to do it way more often. Of course, he shouldn’t abuse it, not least because its effect would possibly wear off, but…a few well-timed comments and compliments from time to time, when it wasn’t expected? Oh, yes, _please._

That said…

“If anyone ought to be blushing right now, it’s me, angel, not you.”

“I’m not, not…” The protest died on his lips as he looked into yellow eyes.

“Why should you be blushing?” he asked, though, with a small frown.

Crowley’s eyebrows shot all the way to the top floor of his hairline at that. Or so it felt like, at least. Was he seriously asking that?

Of course, demons weren’t exactly known for blushing, to say the least, and Crowley, always trying to be cool, followed that dictum, too. But for something like this, for his angel, now, he felt…

He felt comfortable and ready to blush. At least metaphorically, if he couldn’t make the colour manifest on his body.

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said, keeping his tone light as he looked upwards and pursed his lips, quite deliberately so.

“Perhaps it’s the small fact that the Angel of the Eastern Gate, the Principality of Books, who only sells off one of his precious tomes when he has absolutely no other option and even then, it’s a toss-up and a struggle, who tells me, a demon, that he’s considered more important to said angel than those very books.”

He lowered his eyes again, to see that the redness had engulfed every inch of skin from the collar of Aziraphale’s shirt all the way up to the roots of his hair.

He felt his heart do something odd but very pleasant in his chest as the sight and was glad of the fact that he had his arms around the rounder body. Because it meant that he got to touch that softness again he so loved as well as prevent the other from moving away.

_Isn’t he just positively adorable? He always was but it’s great to get to see it up close like this._

“Can’t imagine why anyone might be blushing. Might be affected by words like that, at all. Silly of me, isn’t it?”

“Quite so,” Aziraphale agreed and it came out as a gulp more than anything.

There was silence for a moment as Crowley took the opportunity to bask in all the touching.

Not that he didn’t take any and every given chance he could to touch Aziraphale nowadays, of course, within the boundaries the angel felt comfortable with, obviously – after all, that was what had sparked this whole debacle, after all, him spreading himself out and basking in it – but there was something else to this.

An awareness he hadn’t been conscious of before. A small sense of a precipice, perhaps, but a…good one?

In that spirit, aided by their current proximity, he closed the small distance between their faces, pushing his nose into the soft, reddened, warm flesh of Aziraphale’s cheek. He nuzzled the cheek, in fact, humming gently as he did.

A small gasp was his reward, along with the fact that the blond didn’t pull away.

“C-Crowley?”

“Mmh,” the demon replied as he pulled away, just slightly. “Wanted to do that for a long time. Even nicer than I imagined, which is pretty amazing. Might have to do it again, though. Is that alright?”

“Well, yes. I…just that?”

“Well, I’m not allowed to squirm, am I? Does sort of limit things.”

Looking at him out of the corner of his eye for a moment, Aziraphale muttered, “Well, I’m sure you can think of something. For one thing, there’s…kissing…”

Oh, he couldn’t pass something like that up, could he?

**Author's Note:**

> I know that there are more likely than not paints and varnish that's not going to give off fumes, but I'm thinking Aziraphale might not have thought that far in his anger. Which I am not condoning, btw, just to be extra clear.
> 
> Feedback is seriously loved and treasured, if your criticism is constructive :)


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